When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.

Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.

This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

"Some books are read and put away. Others demand to be talked about. Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl will be talked about." -- Ellen Hopkins, New York Times bestselling author of Crank

"I was knocked over by Living Dead Girl. Most authors want to hear 'I couldn't put it down' from their fans. Living Dead Girl is a book you have to put down; then you have to pick it right back up. The beauty of this story is that, though none of its readers will have had this experience, all will feel connected to it. It is told in the rarest of air, yet speaks horrifically to all our imaginations." -- Chris Crutcher, author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes and Deadline

"A haunting story of an abducted girl you'll be desperate and helpless to save; her captor so disturbing, so menacing, you'll want to claw the pages from this book and shred them. Brava to Elizabeth Scott for creating such an intense, real, and perfectly painful story of terror, not without hope. Living Dead Girl is impossible to ignore." -- Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of Wake

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Reading Group Guide

Prereading Activity Ask students to write down the definition of oxymoron. Then have them discuss possible meanings for the phrase "living dead." What inferences can they make from the title? What predictions can they make about the story? What kinds of experiences would make them -- or anyone -- feel "living dead"? Discussion Questions In the first three chapters, Alice's story moves from third-person point of view, to second, then to first. While most of the story is told from first-person point of view, what effect does the shift have on your responses to the story? Through which viewpoint do you feel most connected with the character? Why? What do you think Scott hoped to achieve in shifting the point of view? In what way does the shift contribute to the mood of the story? Scott uses a literary technique known as "stream of consciousness." Alice's thoughts and memories are presented as they flow through her mind with no regard for logical order or sentence structure. Her thoughts are sometimes fragmented; they shift over time and space, and can be difficult to follow. Find passages in the text in which Alice's thoughts leap across time and space. Discuss what these scenes tell us about Alice. What effect does the stream of consciousness technique have on the reader? How does the use of stream of consciousness contribute to the overall story? How would you describe Ray? What events in his life have made him who he is? Find pass
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Behind the Book

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Usually, when I get an idea for a story, it comes in bits and pieces. But once in a while— great while, frankly—an idea will come to me fully formed, a story demanding to be told.

Living Dead Girl was one of those stories.

I woke up the night of April 5, 2007, from a disturbing dream. I write all my dreams down, and usually they're pretty nonsensical, but this one was different.

About the Author

Elizabeth Scott is the author of Bloom, Perfect You, Living Dead Girl, Something Maybe, The Unwritten Rule, Between Here and Forever, and Miracle, among others. She lives just outside Washington, D.C. with her husband and firmly believes you can never own too many books. Visit her online at ElizabethWrites.com.